Today in Georgia, a special grand jury will finally convene in private to weigh whether former President Donald Trump and his allies violated state election laws when trying to overturn his 2020 defeat there to now-President Joe Biden.
Sparked by Trump’s Jan. 2, 2021 phone call when he asked Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is investigating a multitude of criminal issues. These include possible racketeering charges as well as fraud connected to Trump’s “alternate elector” scheme, which he and his allies in Congress (and elsewhere) featured prominently before the attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Up to 50 witnesses are expected to testify, including Raffensperger, The New York Times reported Monday. The presiding judge, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, has set a period of one year for the special grand jury to render a decision.
The proceedings will unfold in Atlanta starting Wednesday and will be conducted in secret, as well as ensconced with heavy security due to ongoing threats targeting Willis and members of her staff.
Once the special grand jury—comprised of 23 jurors and three alternates—completes its evaluation, the district attorney may then choose to pursue indictment by way of a regular grand jury.
RELATED STORY: Ex-Trump adviser receives grand jury subpoena tied to Jan. 6
Campaign Action
Trump has responded to the ongoing investigation in Georgia as he has done when other probes are raised into his conduct, alleged and otherwise: He lashed out with tirades about yet another “witch hunt” being launched against him.
District Attorney Willis has been steadfast in rejecting those claims about the inquiry in Georgia. She has a “duty to investigate,” she has said, and the special grand jury was convened in light of the possible crimes Trump may have committed on Jan. 2, 2021, as well as at other times in Georgia.
In that vein, Willis is putting forward racketeering charges for consideration. Those charges would center on the bogus elector slates that Trump and his allies submitted to the Electoral College. There is also an anticipated review of a November 2020 phone call between Raffensperger and Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.
Raffensperger told reporters that Graham initiated the call and wanted the secretary to field questions about signature matching for absentee ballots in Georgia: Did he, as secretary, have the authority to toss out the state’s mail-in ballots if the signatures didn’t match?
During the call, Graham also told Raffensperger there must be signatures that get accepted and should not be, because of “political bias in certain counties,” the secretary recalled at the time.
To Raffensperger, it seemed like Graham was suggesting that he find a legal way to toss ballots. That ask, in any event, was far beyond the scope of the secretary’s authority, since he cannot administer or control election procedures.
“It sure looked like he was wanting to go down that road,” Raffensperger said.
Graham was one of Trump’s most fierce allies at the height of Trump’s push to stop the impending certification of the 2020 election results by Congress on Jan. 6.
The senator has dismissed suggestions that he was trying to overturn the election (or aid those who wanted to) as “ridiculous.” He has historically described his call with Raffensperger as something of a routine inquiry by a legislator who is merely curious about how signature-matching requirements work.
“If he feels threatened by that conversation, he’s got a problem. I actually thought it was a good conversation,” Graham told The Washington Post in November 2020.
Graham did not immediately return a request for comment to Daily Kos on Wednesday.
Special grand jurors will also review evidence tied to the so-called “alternate elector” scheme spearheaded by Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani.
Giuliani gave a presentation to Georgia officials about the Trump campaign’s fraud allegations in a bid to waylay certification. That presentation was delivered to a number of people including two state senators, Democrats Jen Jordan and Elena Parent. Both are expected to testify before the special grand jury after receiving subpoenas earlier this year.
Giuliani’s claims were bunk: There was never any evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election. Multiple statewide audits ultimately determined this, too, and a slew of lawsuits brought by Trump and a coterie of his attorneys ended with the same finding from judge after judge, time and time again.
The Department of Justice under Trump also conducted a probe into the fraud claims. It, too, found no evidence of fraud that was significant enough to alter the election’s final outcome: Trump lost.
RELATED STORY: Bill Barr may be cooperating with Jan. 6 investigation, officially
Though there is one year allotted for the special grand jury to hear the evidence in this inquiry, it could take jurors less time.
Willis has been even-keeled about her expectations, telling the Times she is unsure “what games folks are going to play” when they testify:
“I don’t know how many times we’re going to have to fight someone just to get them to come speak to a grand jury and tell the truth. And there could be delays for those reasons. In a perfect world, I’d be done in the next 60 to 90 days. But I live in an imperfect world,” she said Monday.
In addition to testimony provided by Raffensperger, NBC News affiliate 11Alive in Atlanta has reported that subpoenas were also issued to members of the Secretary of State’s office. Testimony is expected from Gabriel Sterling, the secretary’s chief operating officer. General counsel Ryan Germany was also subpoenaed. Chris Harvey, the onetime head of the state’s elections division, was called forward and so was former chief investigator Frances Watson. An executive assistant in the secretary's office, Victoria Thompson, was also summoned.
Willis has also indicated that the special grand jury could review information about the resignation of Byung J. Pak, a former U.S. attorney in Atlanta who resigned suddenly in January 2021.
Pak was tight-lipped about his resignation when it was first announced on Jan. 4 but during a closed-door session with the Senate Judiciary Committee last August, he spoke to lawmakers at length about the decision.
Pak reportedly said that he left the top prosecutor position in Atlanta because he received a warning from those inside the Justice Department that Trump was on the warpath and wanted Pak fired. Pak was investigating election fraud in Fulton County and had found nothing.
According to The New York Times:
Mr. Pak testified that top department officials had made clear that Mr. Trump intended to fire him over his refusal to say that the results in Georgia had been undermined by voter fraud, the person said. Resigning would pre-empt a public dismissal.
During the call with Raffensperger—two days before Pak resigned—Trump referred to the lead prosecutor.
“You have your never-Trumper U.S. attorney there,” Trump said.
The special grand jury in Georgia is separate from the probe led by Congress’ Jan. 6 committee into Trump’s conduct in the run-up to January 6.
Investigators on that select panel resume public hearings on June 9. The debut hearing was held in July 2021 and featured testimony from members of the U.S. Capitol Police and Metropolitan Police Department. Since then, the select committee has interviewed more than 1,000 people, including high-ranking officials in Trump’s administration and campaign.
There is also a separate, sweeping Justice Department probe into the Capitol attack and the events leading up to it. And there are currently no less than four grand juries convened on related issues.
It was revealed this week by Peter Navarro, Trump’s onetime trade advisor, that he received a subpoena from the DOJ to testify before a federal grand jury.
The subpoena to Navarro, The Guardian reported, also sought “all documents relating to the subpoena dated February 9, 2022, that you received from the House select committee including but not limited to any communication with former President Trump and/or his counsel or representatives.”
Navarro refused to cooperate with the Jan. 6 probe and earned himself a contempt of Congress referral for his obstruction.
Though the Navarro subpoena could indicate that the DOJ is following through on the contempt referral, it also signals that the department is reviewing Trump directly, given the explicit mention of his name in the subpoena.
In addition to the Navarro grand jury, a grand jury was impaneled last year for onetime Trump adviser Steve Bannon. Bannon, like Navarro, refused to cooperate with the Jan. 6 committee and was slapped with a contempt of Congress charge. He goes to trial this summer.
Another grand jury in Washington is reviewing the alternate elector scheme and Trump lawyers like Giuliani and John Eastman have reportedly been subpoenaed in that matter.
It is illegal to knowingly make a false statement to the feds or their representatives. The so-called slates of “Trump electors” were signed and submitted as legitimate to federal and state officials, as well as those officials at the National Archives. This has opened a well of concerns for the DOJ and has drawn people like Giuliani, Eastman, and Jenna Ellis, another Trump attorney who pushed the election fraud conspiracy, into the department’s sights.
Eastman, meanwhile, has been in the middle of a fraught legal battle to shield records from the select committee. He’s been losing that fight, however, and has been forced to turn over troves of documents related to the overthrow attempt.
The presiding federal judge, David Carter, handed the Jan. 6 probe a sizeable victory when he ruled in March that Trump likely engaged in a criminal conspiracy to subvert the 2020 election.
As noted by Politico, one of the memos churned up in Eastman’s production came from Kenneth Chesebro, another member of Trump’s legal team.
Chesebro pushed Trump’s alternate elector scheme in a Nov. 18 memo to Jim Troupis, then the chief attorney for Trump’s embattled campaign in Wisconsin.
RELATED STORY: Coterie of Trump’s election fraud lawyers hit with Jan. 6 committee subpoenas
That memo was titled, “The Real Deadline for Setting a State’s Electoral Votes,” and proposed that the “real” date that lawmakers could meet to count and certify votes was Jan. 6, instead of Dec. 14. That was the officially recognized safe harbor date for the Electoral College to count votes.
Just one day before that deadline, on Dec. 13, 2020, court records now show Chesebro sent an email to Rudy Giuliani. This time, Cheseboro was proposing a plan to have then-Vice President Mike Pence stop the count on Jan. 6 in order to bar Biden’s popular and electoral victories from becoming certified.
This email served as a strong basis for Judge Carter’s decision to wrest documents away from Eastman.
Court records also show Chesebro proposed that Sen. Lindsey Graham hold public hearings mere days before the certification to discuss Pence’s authority over the count. He also proposed that Pence recuse himself altogether. He wanted Sen. Chuck Grassley to stand in his place, or another Republican senator of their choice.
Politico reported Wednesday:
“Then, that senator would lead the count but refuse to accept any electors in the states Trump was contesting. Instead, the senator would contend that if those states wanted to be counted, they had to rerun their elections, engage in more litigation or have their legislatures appoint new electors.”
A fourth grand jury is also open and looking into organizers of the former president’s rallies leading up to and on Jan. 6. Ali Alexander, the right-wing founder of the ‘Stop the Steal’ movement, testified before a grand jury in April. He previously sat for deposition with the Jan. 6 committee.
Trump is also under investigation in New York for alleged tax fraud.
He recently lost an appeal to evade testifying under oath in a state court there. An appellate court upheld a February ruling that enforced subpoenas for the former president in connection to New York Attorney General Letitia James’ probe. It also forced Trump’s two eldest children to testify. There’s still a chance for Trump to wriggle out of this, though. He has now appealed even further to New York’s highest appellate court.
James says the investigation into the Trump Organization has turned up evidence of fraudulent property valuations.
